Hi,
Has anyone used the Ceracell Round comb honey super on the Flowhive? It’s from New Zealand & is similar to Ross Rounds in the US. We are thinking of harvesting some honey comb next season & this looks like an easy way of harvesting it.
Haven’t heard of it, but I use ideal foundationless boxes above my flow box for honey comb. Cuts up beautifully and the bees love the escape. Keeps them from building comb in the roof.
Do you have a link to Ceracell round comb? If they use any kind of wax foundation, I would rather go with my pure bee generated comb, which I can cut to any size. Even round.
http://www.ceracell.co.nz/shop/Hive+Component/Ceracell+round+comb+honey+system/x_cat/01421.html
You use beeswax foundation, just looks like any easy way to harvest comb, keeps in line with the Flow hive idea.
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I agree with Webclan. Those systems look like the bizo, but the most straightforward and organic way to produce honeycomb is to put some foundationless frames in your honey super. You end up with the most amazing product that has not been touched by human hand (until you cut it) and doesn’t have any chemicals in the wax.
I put on a single super which gets near to full of honey, then add the second super, but swap out five full frames and separate them all with a foundationless frame across two boxes. So, 10 + 10 a bit like checkerboarding.
Also, if you only have one hive, and it’s a flow hive, I wouldn’t be putting any other supers on to collect honey. Both the Flow and the Ceracell round comb systems need your hive to be absolutely bulging with bees to work well, and when you harvest, the bees simply refill what you took away.
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Thanks for your ideas, maybe if we split the hive we might do the new hive for comb only.
Is there chemicals in the foundation wax or do you mean chemicals leaking from the plastic rings?
So you don’t think the flow hive will support a half frame for comb above the flow super?
some people are concerned that chemicals can be found in the wax foundation. Especially in the US and places where hives are regularly treated for mites.
There was another cassette type frame posted a while ago:
http://forum.honeyflow.com/t/interesting-way-to-get-bees-to-make-pre-packaged-honeycomb-honey/9730?u=faroe
Don’t know if anyone tried it yet.
The other option is getting a Flow Super Hybrid and popping that on top of your super and you will have half honeycomb, and half Flow Frames.
Hi @Beesrcool. When we had a good flow on i had bees building in the roof space (why I never block the hole up there), but the flow frames were not quite full yet. So I figured I had too many bored bees and added an ideal super with foundationless frames on top. It’s about half height of the normal boxes. They built them out in about 3 weeks, and when the nectar flow started reclining, I took the box off. Half of the comb was capped and I cut it into nice portions, the rest of the frames I put into the freezer for a week and I now keep them sealed in plastic bags.
I just think with your rounds is either they are full or not. No in between or flexibility. Especially, if you use them with flow frames on one hive together, what is your priority?
Maybe it could be a fancy option if you just had a normal hive. I reckon our flow hives are fancy enough, and keep your beekeeping around that as natural as possible. That’s why I only use foundationless.